EOFY checklist for businesses

There’s lots to do as a business owner as you focus on year-end accounting and bookkeeping tasks in addition to some forward planning for the new financial year. To help simplify things, Amanda Gascoigne has prepared this handy EOFY checklist for businesses.

Ensure that your BAS lodgements are accurate and up-to-date – if not attend to lodgement, arrange an ATO plan and consider how you can keep up to date in 2019/2020.

Ensure your super guarantee (SG) contributions are accurate and up-to-date – your March SG is due 28 April 2019 and if you have prior quarters outstanding contact your accountant or bookkeeper for guidance as soon as possible.

Will you be ready for Single Touch Payroll (STP) by the start date of 1 July? If not contact your accountant or bookkeeper to assist you transition or to advise if you may be eligible for a slightly later start date or transitional arrangement. Remember there is no need to wait until 1 July and you can join the 27,000 small employers who have already started reporting.

Reconcile your payroll and get ready to provide 2019 PAYG Payment Summaries to your employees ensuring that salary sacrifice superannuation contributions (RESC) and certain reportable fringe benefits are being correctly dealt with. There are a few changes this year depending if you are reporting by STP.

If you are not reporting to the ATO via STP, you will be required to provide 2019 PAYG Payment Summaries to your employees by 14 July 2019. Your Annual 2019 PAYG Payment Summary needs to be lodged with the ATO by 14 August 2019. There may be penalties imposed by the ATO if they are not lodged on time.

If you are reporting to the ATO via STP, you are exempt from providing payment summaries to your employees and from lodging a PAYG payment summary annual report for the amounts you’ve reported through STP as long as you undertake the finalisation declaration by the prescribed date. You will have up until 31 July to ‘finalise’ your employees’ EOFY payroll information through your STP enabled payroll software – but this can be finalised as soon as you have reconciled the information and happy with its completeness and accurateness. Your employees will be able to access their income statement online via myGov under the employment tab. If your employees don’t have a myGov account and cannot create one, or do not have a registered agent, they can call the ATO on 13 28 61 and they will provide it. You certainly can provide a copy, however there’s no legal requirement to do so.

Ensure your records are compliant with the ATO. The ATO requires businesses to keep records for at least five years and more and more businesses are choosing to go paperless. Consider if this is something you would like to implement from 1 July 2019 in addition to using accounting software.

Have your accountant review your automatic bank rules and the GST codes assigned to the Profit and Loss and Balance Sheet items to ensure you are lodging an accurate BAS.

If your business carries stock, the stocktake of inventory should be completed by 30 June 2019 so decide on a suitable date and get that marked in your diary. If you have adjusted stock quantities and identified spoilage in your inventory, this should be adjusted as at 30 June 2019 to ensure it is reflected in the 2018/19 accounts.

If your business has substantial plant and equipment and you maintain an asset register, review this register and record any adjustments including description, location, quantity and damage/obsolescence and provide to your accountant or bookkeeper to ensure they reflect these changes in the 2018/19 accounts.

Review your Balance Sheet and Profit and Loss Statement to ensure you have completed the following items:

Compare your Accountants Receivables and Payables Reports to amounts shown on the Balance Sheet to ensure no ‘out of balance’

GST and PAYG withholding accounts are reconciled to the June BAS

Wages and Superannuation in the Profit and Loss are reconciled to the PAYG Payment Summaries

Amounts in suspense have been allocated to the appropriate ledger account or if unsure, complete note in the memo to assist your accountant or bookkeeper determine the correct treatment

Personal expenses have not been claimed as business expenses

Material differences to the prior year can be properly explained

Bonus EOFY checklist for businesses

To help you improve your current business performance, we’ve outlined an additional checklist:

Update your business and life plan to provide some forward direction for your business. What are your goals for the next 12 months? What are you goals for the next three to five years? What areas of you business do you want to improve or change? Your accountant can be an invaluable resource to help you pivot or put in place a plan to get you where you want to go faster and with more ease.

Update your Profit and Loss and cash flow budgets for the next 12 months. Compare your actual performance to your original budget. You may be able to reduce your costs in areas identified as excessive in the current year. There may be also be areas of your business where costs are rising. You may also want to increase how much you get paid out of your business. All of these things may point to a need to raise your prices from 1 July. Again, an accountant will be able to help you set that price and give you tips to communicate such an increase to your customers/clients.

Review your financing arrangements. Don’t be afraid to shop around for a better deal.

If you are still using a manual accounting system, then consider upgrading to a cloud-based, online accounting software such as MYOB AccountRight or MYOB Essentials to process the day to day transactions, manage cash flow and also keep track of purchases and payments. The ability to see Profit and/or Loss (hopefully the latter isn’t the case, but if it is then ignoring the problem won’t help to solve it) on a daily basis is good for business and many say it actually spurs them on to meet their sales and profit targets – who would of thought numbers could be so much fun while also keeping your business on track?

Want to make sure you’re staying on top of your small business bookkeeping in the lead up to EOFY? Check out MYOB’s EOFY calendar today.